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    Down in the White of the Tree: Spiritual Poems
    Down in the White of the Tree: Spiritual Poems
    Down in the White of the Tree: Spiritual Poems
    Ebook120 pages43 minutes

    Down in the White of the Tree: Spiritual Poems

    By Tim J. Myers

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    About this ebook

    The marriage of poetry and spirituality is of course an ancient one, and in Down in the White of the Tree, Tim J. Myers works in that tradition. But his isn't conventional religious poetry, some of which, he believes, is either inadequate for genuine spiritual seeking or antithetical to it. Myers works from the larger tradition, in which Rilke speaks of God as the profoundly distant Center on whose outermost periphery we reside—and from which Hafiz can assert that the universe is “just a tambourine” for us to play against our “warm thigh[s].” These are poems of doubt, of faith, and of a profound love for the radiance we can encounter in the world.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRegal House Publishing
    Release dateNov 16, 2018
    ISBN9781947548480
    Down in the White of the Tree: Spiritual Poems
    Author

    Tim J. Myers

    Tim J. Myers is a writer, teacher, and storyteller. He is the author of numerous children’s books, including Basho and the Fox, which made the New York Times best-seller list for children’s books and was chosen by Smithsonian Magazine as a notable book. Myers lives in Santa Clara, CA, where he also lectures at Santa Clara University.

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      Book preview

      Down in the White of the Tree - Tim J. Myers

      (Confucius)

      Introduction

      Myself As Tree: A Prayer

      Adonai,

      give me life then kill me if You must,

      only let it be

      that like a tree I live, a planted thing,

      knowing the ground deep and deeper,

      drinking up world through roots I send down,

      water-life drawn from soil and darkness—

      let the season-round ring by ring increase me—

      when sun comes, let my leaves flutter

      each with its small luster—

      let autumn-release fling my numberless seeds

      outward on winds

      shifting and sure as Hope—

      and when my sap fails at last, come Thou, Axeman,

      fell me hard, lay me down,

      (I’ll murmur Your name all the while),

      stand over me gripping the ax of Death

      and split me with Your hands

      (the right I call Making, the left Unmaking),

      let the blade bite, let it jump into

      my drying white interior,

      oh Unspeakable, shape me, plane me—

      make me a Door.

      February, 1991

      Tonight on the car radio

      I heard a trumpet revealing,

      in minor scales, the eventual death

      of the sun.

      At the game today a misthrown ball

      went flying into the stands.

      A father threw his arms around

      his little girl, instantly, thoughtlessly.

      The bitterness of wasted deaths

      cannot overcome the truth

      of his gesture.

      There’s a war on now. They made

      love at midnight

      in utter joy and abandon.

      How many millennia did it take

      before we could make a rake—a fence—a school?

      I have books, and the great dead

      as if voices in my own ears, tonight.

      We must adjust the budget

      for unexpected military expenditures.

      In my love’s belly the bones

      of our child are forming.

      What should I say to the

      bright-specked wheeling night sky?

      Paleolithic Burial

      When he died they hunched him up

      like baby in womb, curled him

      into a shallow scoop in the cave-floor,

      planted him like a seed as he slowly stiffened,

      covering his slumped and earthen limbs

      with a layer of red ochre,

      sprinkling him with wildflowers—

      then turned away.

      Moon comes back each month, so bright,

      then curls itself into a dying crescent—

      baby struggles out of a woman’s darkness—

      petals of delicate blue, pale yellow, in the wetwoods,

      how do they know

      when sun is past dying and comes

      to life again?

      This is older than cities or books,

      older than prayers or earnest discussions,

      older than farming,

      something buried and burst open long before

      words, ideas, church or temple or crudest holy place,

      older even than itself,

      this longing.

      On Laughter

      Philosophers, tell us what

      laughter is.

      Explain this violent extraverbal utterance

      leaping up through us and out,

      sweetly infectious—

      explain our temporary scorn

      for all limits, all suffering,

      for death itself, when we inhabit

      the little kingdom of a joke—

      explain the whole of Spring

      arriving in sudden gust,

      epiphany of the belly—

      pore over your books,

      weigh the various factors,

      construct even more profound explanations

      than those you’ve already given,

      which are, I’m forced to say,

      inadequate—

      We’ve stolen the Elixir

      from under your noses.

      Secrets

      In summer, say,

      a row of potted plants

      on a sidewalk, or

      trains taking people to work.

      Secrets up out of

      ordinary things—

      how they press themselves

      against all that

      contains them,

      these secrets,

      revenants striving against

      matter. Existence

      as it gives life leaves so much

      buried.

      Set the table

      carefully—you are

      establishing something.

      Deep-rooted willow tree.

      Empty ball field.

      After Prayer

      Across from

      the smoothie stand,

      hummingbird in

      mating dance

      hovering at fifty feet

      falls, light-shot

      streak chittering

      ecstasy.

      I keep

      begging God

      for a sign—

      World sings back, relentless,

      what greater sign

      than Me?

      At the Edge

      At the edge of the cemetery,

      where row

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